Despite Bankruptcy, Olevia Says Warranties Good

By Ben PopkenJuly 28, 2008

Even though they filed for Chapter 11, the makers of Olevia brand TVs have pledged that they will continue to honor their warranties, reports Marketnews. The news should come as a relief to worried consumers. Olevia was known for making good HD-LCD tvs at a good price.

I had never heard of this company before maybe a couple years ago when the flat-screen boom was starting to get heavy. I’m reluctant to buy a brand that hasn’t been established for several years (like ten or twenty) or has an amazing reputation. It’s good that they’ll honor the warranties, though. I wonder how long they’ll keep up.

I have a an Olevia. It is an HD-LCD, and it was cheap (37″ for $1000 in the summer of ’06), but I wouldn’t go so far to say it is good. There is a 50-100 millisecond lag to render the image, the sharpness setting resets itself higher than 100 whenever an HD device initializes a connection (usually at every power-on for the HD device, but in some cases even more often), the TV tuner’s audio chip cannot reconstruct a stereo signal without producing a choppy, static-noise-ridden signal, and the gamma curve is so sharp (without any apparent menu adjustment beyond brightness and contrast) that most HD images look like backlit, overexposed photographs when both black and white are on the screen. The only good part about it that the “tube” is made by Philips and can occasionally produce a very nice image. But the underlying electronics are miserable garbage. I would never buy another Olevia product and I would not hesitate to recommend against buying one to anyone considering it. Good riddance to them for all I care. I’m good to hear that their warranties will be honored but I really feel sorry for the suckers who find themselves in a position where they might need to cash in on it.

I have a 37″ Olevia that I got at KMart for 625 down from 899 in a preSuperBowl special. It’s a crazy good set for the price paid and I have been thrilled with it.

I am not pleased to hear this news but hopefully it will never come a time when it’s an issue for me. Basically my take was that Olevia and Vizio were very similar but Olevia seemed to be undercutting Vizio on price. Maybe that didn’t work out so well for them.

I own 2 of their 37″ HDTV flat screen TVs. Damn good TVs. No issues with ‘em. Nice, crisp bright pictures. I was in the market to buy a bigger one from them, for the living room and then saw the bankruptcy news. Shame.

A tip: when the Olevia splash screen shows up, press volume up or down, or channel up or down. The screen disappears and you get an image instantly. Makes perfect sense, right? Too bad they never fixed it with a firmware update.

I have the 37″ 5 series, bought in October of 06. I love the TV. It actually looks better than my calibrated Mits RPTV. Minor quirks are the sound isnt too great and the startup lag, but for the price paid vs performance I can live with the quirks.

Isn’t Olevia-Syntax and now Syntax-Brillian? Brillian was very “closed-dealer exclusive” so this is expected. I had an early Olevia LCD and it was junk (needed 2 circuit boards and new audio board after a year). It still works (for gaming) but as a TV, it was “ya got wat ya paid fo”.
@The_IT_Crone: Yeah, the remote buttons were spongy.

Bose = Better Off with Something Else. All hype, no substance. And their ‘outlet’ stores…
Much like Apple, if you want to be a Bose dealer, you will carry what Bose wants you to carry, and you will sell it for the price Bose tells you. An unauthorized ‘sale’ will typically cost you your license to sell Bose.

Here in Hong Kong, some company in Taiwan uses the name of Olevia to make much mroe than what is seen here: they still sell TVs, and even HD Digital set-top boxes. So, some countries have a different Olevia. Syntax-Brillian is out of business, but the company here (SCHOT) that uses the name isn’t. And yes, they are also ridiculously cheap.